I got a tattoo on a Tinder date.

I didn’t even like the girl.

She smelt like an ashtray and had a weird sounding laugh.

Somehow we still ended up in a tattoo parlour in Sydney, holding hands, and getting ink at the same time.

Woke up with a hangover and fresh ink the next day.

But that’s not actually my most impressive tattoo.

I’m not sure how to define ‘impressive’ anyway.

No really. I don’t know what that word means. I was raised by wolves and didn’t learn English until I was 22.

I still struggle with mixing up their/they’re/there but I can chase down and rip the throat out of a deer like you wouldn’t believe.

But once I was re-introduced to the modern world I went out and got a bunch of ink. And you might find some of those pieces impressive. You might not.

I’ve currently got a good selection across my body - legs, arms and torso, you’ll find something somewhere if you look hard enough.

Here’s one of my personal favorites though.

It’s the ‘Angel of Death’.

Beautiful. Alluring. Intoxicating.

And beckoning you towards eternal nothingness with her sirens call.

In my 244 days fighting Leukemia, I danced with her often.

She came to my bedside when my body went into Septic Shock.

Leaning down to kiss me into the next world, it was only some bloody marvelous doctors and one heart starting adrenaline injection that brought my organs back to life and kept her at bay.

And now, as those hospital days fade into memory, I don’t feel her presence anymore.

I don’t stop and pause when a cold chill runs down my spine. Not like I used to.

But I know she’s out there.

Waiting. Watching.

We’re all on borrowed time on this earth.

And someday, she’ll come calling, without exception.

There’s a debt to pay. And though I got an extension, I know she’ll be back.

Until then, I’ll carry her on my arm as a reminder of when we almost met.

And a motivation to live my life to the fullest before she comes and claims that eternal kiss again.